Children of Paranoia (27 page)

“Why not?” you asked.

“Because I wasn't eighteen.”

“I don't understand,” you said.

“I know.” How could you understand? “I'll explain.” Slides of the enemy, in every lesson I ever sat through, that was what came next. Talk to them about death and then show them the killers. “There's a group of people out there and they are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends.” Your face changed again. This time, after the confusion turned to fear, the fear turned to disbelief.

“Why?” you asked.

I only had one response, even if I didn't fully believe it anymore. “Because they're evil,” I answered. Forget all the other stories. Forget the story about the slave rebellion. Forget the story about the five armies. Forget the broken peace treaties. I had to convince you that my enemy was evil so that you wouldn't run from me when I told you all the things I'd done.

You responded with the appropriate disbelief. “So you're telling me there's a group of these evil people out there that are murdering your family and your friends and no one notices?”

“A lot of people notice,” I answered. “But everything is covered up. And it's not just my family and friends. It's more than that. It's a lot more. Do you know how many deaths are attributed to accidents in the United States each year?” You shook your head. “Over a hundred thousand.” I knew the numbers. We all knew the numbers. “People aren't that accident prone. Most of those deaths aren't accidents.”

“What are you telling me?” you asked. You weren't sure if you believed me.

“It's a war,” I answered.

You understood now. For the first time, you understood. I could see it in your eyes. “So what do you do?”

“I fight them,” I responded.

“What do you mean,
you
fight them?” you asked.

“I seek them out. I find them and I make sure that they can't kill people anymore. I make sure they can never again do what they did to my sister.”

“You kill them?” There was no color left in your face.

“If I have to,” I responded.

“How often do you have to?”

I didn't want to answer this question but I had promised. “A lot. It's a war, Maria.”

“Are there others?” I chuckled at this question. You would only ask it if you thought that maybe I was crazy, a lone vigilante fighting an imaginary enemy.

“Thousands of others,” I answered. I had no idea what the actual number was. Hundreds? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? They never told me. Maybe Jared knew.

“But what are you fighting for?” you asked. By this point, you were barely able to speak.

“My sister,” I answered, hoping that, after everything I'd just told you, this would resonate.

“Okay,” you responded. “That's why you're fighting. Why is everyone else fighting?” I had never been asked that question before.

“Because everyone has a story like that, Maria. My friend Jared watched them strangle his older brother to death. My friend Michael never even knew his parents. He was raised by one of his aunts. Everyone has a reason to fight.”

“But that doesn't make any sense, Joe. It had to have started somewhere. People don't have wars for no reason. You have to be fighting over something. Power? Land? Money? Something.” There was pity in your eyes. Hiding behind the fear was pity. The pity made me angry. It made me feel like a fool.

I thought about telling you the stories then. I thought about telling you about the slave rebellion and how we fought to keep the rest of the world free. I thought about telling you about the broken peace treaties, but I knew that it wouldn't make a difference. Even if these stories were true, they weren't your stories. You can't understand until you have a reason of your own to fight. We all want to know the history. We all want to know that we're the good guys. But history only gets you so far. So I answered as best I could. “Survival” was all I could come up with.

“That doesn't make any sense, Joe.” There were tears in your eyes.

“You just don't understand,” I replied. “Your family wasn't killed. How could you understand?”

You began to cry. “You can't have a war for survival, Joe. It doesn't make any sense. If you're both just trying to survive, all you have to do is stop fighting.”

“If only it were that easy, Maria.”

“So when does it stop, then?” you asked. You knew the answer without me saying a word. You began to cry. The tears flowed freely down your cheeks. “Does it ever end?”

I didn't answer you. I was growing weary of answering questions that I didn't know the answer to.

“How many?” you asked, the flow of tears waning. You wanted to know how many people I had killed. I wasn't going to answer that question either.

“As many as I've had to,” I answered.

“How many?” you asked with more force. I just shook my head. You saw that you weren't going to get anything more from me.

“What am I supposed to do?” You looked up at me, your blue eyes as large as moons.

“Trust me,” I pleaded, kneeling down in front of you. “I'm a good person, Maria. Trust me.” Even as I said the words I knew that you had no reason to trust me. If it weren't for your own secrets, I'm convinced that you would have run. I wouldn't have blamed you for running.

“And what about me?” you asked.

“If you stay with me, you become part of this. There are certain rules that will protect you, at least in the beginning.”

“Rules?” you asked.

“Yeah,” I responded, realizing how ridiculous it sounded. “It's like how I told you that they couldn't kill me when they came for my sister because I wasn't eighteen. That's one of the rules.” As I spoke, I didn't realize how important the rules would become. “Another rule is that they can't kill innocent bystanders. So they can't touch you, not unless we become a family. If that happens, I'll protect you.” I should have told you to run. I should have begged you to stay as far away from me as possible. If I were brave, I would have left you. Instead, I muttered, “I can't ask you to stay. All I can do is promise that I will do everything I can to protect you.”

There was a long stretch of painful silence. My whole body ached. It was your turn to speak. You took my hands in yours. You turned my hands over so that you could look at my palms. “You kill people. You kill people with these hands.” It was my turn to cry. I buried my face into your shoulder and wept.

You must have thought about leaving me. You would have been crazy not to. Still, I could tell that you weren't trying to break me down with your questions. You were just trying to fully assess the situation. Do you stay with a man you now know to be a killer or do you run? Eventually my own crying stopped. “Do you trust me?” I asked with as much strength as I could muster.

“I don't think I have any choice,” you replied.

Now it was my turn to be confused. “What do you mean?”

“I'm pregnant.”

In the end it is our secrets that bind us.

 

 

“What?” I stood up again, in shock.

“I'm pregnant, Joe.”

“How?” I was fishing for words.

“You know how, Joe.” Your reply was curt. I wasn't reacting like you wanted me to. I just told you that I end lives. Now you were telling me that you were going to be the source of one and I was acting like a jackass.

“What about birth control?”

“What about it, Joe? This may be the wrong time to bring it up for the first time.” Your voice was becoming angry.

“You're in college. What type of college student isn't on the pill?” It was a stupid comment, but without it, we wouldn't have realized the mess that we were in.

“Yes, I am in university, Joe. But I'm not on the pill.”

“Why not?”

“I'm seventeen, Joe,” you replied.

My thoughts raced. Seventeen? How could you be seventeen? I began to do the math in my head. Seventeen plus nine months. What was seventeen plus nine months?

“But you said you were a sophomore.”

“I told you that I was in second year at university. That's all you ever asked me. You never asked me how old I was. I graduated from high school early. I was advanced.” You were shouting. “I was seventeen, in university and lonely, and then I met you. I've always been different, Joe. I was different from my classmates in high school. I was different from my classmates at university. Then I met you and you were different too. We were different together.” You were pleading with me now. All I could do was keep trying to do the math in my head. Seventeen plus nine months, what was seventeen plus nine months?

“When's your birthday?”

“What difference does that make?” You had gone from being angry at my response to confused.

I looked at you. My look must have frightened you, because you flinched. “When is your birthday?” I repeated.

“I turned seventeen two months ago.” Two months ago. What did that mean? My mind was racing.

“How far along are you?” I asked. It was a stupid question. My brain wasn't functioning properly.

“What do you think, Joe?” you answered.

It was a month ago. I put it together. It was a month ago when we spent the weekend together. You were due in eight months. You'd be two months short of your eighteenth birthday. There was no getting around it. There was no way to stretch things out for an extra two months. I froze.

“Joe?” you shouted, trying to get my attention as I stared off into nowhere. I looked at you. You looked as if you were about to cry again. “Are you happy?”

I couldn't answer your question yet. “Do you know what you're going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

I should have been more tactful. I wasn't. I didn't think we had time. “Are you going to keep it?”

You began to cry again. Your tears made it clear that I was going to be a father. I was going to be the father of a child born to a woman under the age of eighteen. My child was going to be my enemy. That's what the rules said.

I went over to try to hold you, to try to comfort you so that I could explain my reaction. I tried to hug you and you slapped me across my face. It stung. There simply wasn't any time for pain. I reached out and grabbed you again, fighting through your flailing arms until your body was pressed against mine.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” I chanted. I kept repeating the words. They were a mantra. I said them until you stopped struggling and your body went limp in my arms. The secret that I had just revealed to you was already beginning to fade into the background. I couldn't let it fade away. I couldn't let you forget about the War, about my part in the War. I couldn't let you forget any of that because now there was more to tell. You asked me why I fought. I couldn't answer you, not in a way that would make you understand. But now there was a new reason to fight. “Of course I'm happy,” I said to you, trying to sooth you, “but you're a child. You're only seventeen. Are you sure you know what you're doing?”

“A child, Joe? Fuck you. You haven't treated me like a child up until now. You weren't treating me like a child last night. Maybe now's a bad time to start treating me like a fucking child.” Seventeen. Jesus Christ. I looked at you. You were right. If either of us was acting like a child it was me.

“I'm sorry,” I begged again. “I'm sorry for calling you a child. I'm sorry for how I reacted. I'm sorry for everything. I was just surprised. You caught me off guard.” You sobbed into my shirt. It became damp and stuck to my skin. I decided to say whatever it was that I thought you'd want me to say. “I'll be happy to have a child with you. I am happy.” I was still in too much shock to sound convincing. I knew it. You drank it in, though, wanting so badly to be convinced. “I want my child to be your child, but I have one more thing that I need to tell you.” I held you away from me so that I could look into your eyes as I spoke. You were beginning to calm down, my words finally equaling what you had hoped to hear.

“I don't think I can take anything else,” you replied, more prescient than you could even know.

“I'm sorry. But there is one more thing.” Seventeen? I was only sixteen when this War was dropped on top of me. It seemed so young and so long ago. I lived through it, though. You were stronger than me. I told you about the rules again, the rules that I had always viewed as a safe harbor against the madness of this War. Now those same rules seemed beyond cruel. Rule number one: No killing innocent bystanders. Rule number two: No killing anyone under the age of eighteen. All that was left was to explain to you the third rule. Children born to those under the age of eighteen had to be handed over to the other side. You gasped when I told you, quickly grasping the idea. “I would tell you to run but they'd find you,” I said. It was true. Running without me was no longer an option. “They'd find you and they'd take our child. If you're with me I can protect you.”

“There has to be another way.”

“No. There's not. If we are going to have this baby, these are the rules.” You shook your head in disbelief. I wish I had better answers. Better answers didn't exist.

“So what do we do? I'm not giving this baby up, Joe.” Your voice sounded stubborn and strong, stronger than I would have imagined possible at that moment.

I wasn't about to give our baby up, either, Maria. “We run,” I said to you. “We run.” Not yet, but soon.